That's right. MoroniCentral prez Russel Nelson and Ted Bundy - Both of them - did not serve missions.

Nelson used military service as his excuse.

Ted has a number of them he could have used. Being a Convert was one. Law School another. Working on long term goals and a Personal Improvement project with young women another...

Excuses, excuses, excuses.

the military has physicians in its ranks, I'm sure they could have benefited from Nelson's skills.

same for him (not) serving a mission, 'follow the profit' indeed.

Capt Nelson served honorably during the Korean war including time near the front lines in a medical unit. His contributions saved many US and allied service members lives.

Military service was not an excuse for not going on a mission it was a part of life when the United States was at war. Thousands of LDS men and women served in the military vs a mission.

No veteran, especially those that served in combat zones, regardless of their religion, should ever be compared to a mass murderer.

You do a disservice to your country by your comparison.

Nelson murdered people's brains. He's no better than Bundy.

Seriously? I don’t feel like the brain dead years I lost trying to follow the profit were the same as the years the young women who followed Bundy lost. I hate having to stick up for Rusty. But I have to if he’s gonna be lumped into the same category as Ted Bundy. Thanks a lot.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/2020 11:09AM by NormaRae.

I agree, Nightingale, that Nelson should not be placed in the same category as Ted Bundy.

I basically agree, too.

But it depends on how we evaluate "evil." Does Nelson take pleasure from raping and murdering innocent people? No. His character is incomparably superior to that of Bundy.

On the other hand, if we step past the two men's personalities and consider the impact of their behavior it becomes a more difficult call. Bundy confessed to 30 murders, and if we opt for three times that number in order to capture any undetected crimes, we are still short of 100 lives/families ruined.

Nelson became an apostle in 1984, 25 or so years ago. Throughout that period he has supported policies that have resulted in untold deaths of gay people in addition to straight people whom the church has made feel guilty about their natural sexuality. The church has also contributed to the depression of vast numbers of people through its suppression of women, minorities, and others.

How many suicides ensued from those LDS policies? I have no way of knowing but the number is likely higher than the number of lives Bundy ruined, and if we add in the families ruined by depression and guilt and shame the toll could rise into the hundreds of thousands. Moreover, Nelson has allowed those policies to remain in place under his aegis where they can generate still more suffering.

So who is more evil: the retail murderer who counts in ones and tens, or the wholesale murderer who counts in tens of thousands?

How clean, really, are Nelson's hands?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/2020 09:59PM by Lot's Wife.

Revisiting the point, there is a parallel here between white collar and blue collar crime. If a poor person or a gang kills people and is/are convicted, they go to prison or the electric chair. But if a rich person (Bernie Madoff) or the good folks at Enron commit crimes that wipe people out and result in multiple suicides, divorces, and instances of domestic violence, they are usually sentenced to no more than several years in prison. In both cases the perpetrators committed crimes that killed people and yet the penal outcome differs dramatically.

Or consider drug offenses and race. If a black person is convicted of a crime, s/he is sentenced much more heavily than a white person committing effectively the same crime.

At some point we have to stop looking at superficial characteristics like sartorial elegance or skin color and evaluate people based on the predictable effects of the underlying actions. Does, or should, Nelson know that the policies he espouses will kill people and destroy families? He should.

And to that extent he is responsible.

Thanks, scmd1, but that wasn't me! However, I would agree with NormaRae on it too.

The next thing you know, people will be calling you "Delete Account."

but only 2 missionaries a ward were allowed to go out during the Vietnam War. It wasn't this every young man MUST serve a mission. A mission during Vietnam was a luxury. I do know my uncle, who I detest, served in Korea and also went on a mission. So it is possible to do both.

The last 3 bishops we've had in the ward I happen to reside in have not been on missions. My husband did serve a mission and he was adored by the mission president and his family. He worked in the mission office, but I can't remember what it was he did.

This rumor that only two men per ward were allowed to be on a mission at one time was started when people started to be called as G.A.s who had not served missions and who were mission age during Vietnam. Most of them had not served in the military either, they had survived on college deferments.

When that rumor started circulating it made no sense because I'd never heard of it at the time and I know we would have heard that some of our friends would not be able to serve missions because of that rule. I thought back to my high school years and I knew that most of the time we had probably an average of 5 serving from our ward at any one time. I can't remember a time when our ward only had two. So I did some searching and found out that there was a certain number of ecclesiastical deferments that the church was allowed. If you took that number and divided it by the number of wards and branches in the church, it came out to about two per ward. Obviously there were many units in the church worldwide that had no one serving missions at any given time. So the quota really wasn't a ward quota, it was a church quota.

So that's how they spun it--two per ward. But it is very misleading. Some wards might have had 10 people serving, other wards none. But I don't know of any documented time a young man was told he couldn't serve a mission because the church (or even his ward) had used up their allotment of deferments.

The last couple years of the draft, when they did the lottery, the church had a system of getting young men on missions FAST. I mean like a couple weeks from submitting papers to leaving. Back then, they'd announce in stake conference when a boy was made an Elder. I remember sitting in stake conference when they announced that my (later) boyfriend's brother was made an Elder. I was shocked. He hadn't been to church in ages and he had a reputation as a partier. I turned to my mother with my mouth hanging open and she said, "He had a really low lottery number."

I later found out that as soon as they held the lottery, there was a process of fast mission calls (and speedy repentance if necessary) to get those kids with low numbers a deferment before they got their draft cards. And there was never any problem because of the supposed two-per-ward rule that wasn't a rule.

Being on my mission when my lottery number came up is what saved my ass, and kept me out of the Army. However, not long afterward (3 years) I joined the Air Force and stayed for 21 years. Apparently I didn't learn.

My uncle got my cousin out on a mission. My dad talked about it a lot even later in life. He was angry that this was going on. He served during the Korean War, so he hated what the lds church was doing. I actually do remember our ward only had 2 missionaries out at a time and we had guys who went to Vietnam. My parents talked about it all the time when it was going on.

This is what I have been told and I did ask about it. I wouldn't expect my parents to have lied to me.

Sorry, this thread is bad taste. Whatever you might think of RMN's Mormon leadership, he was also a surgeon who helped people. Comparing him with a serial killer is a low blow and pretty bad taste.

I think Bundy joined as an adult anyway.

Nelson could have also served a mission, but he chose not to. He could also choose to tell Mormon youth that serving in the military, Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, etc. are all honorable alternatives to serving a mission -- and again, he chooses not to. Do has he says, and not as he has already done.

I'm reluctant to come to the defense of Russell Nelson, but his years of eligibility considerably preceded the "every worthy young man should prepare to serve a mission" and "every young man should serve a mission" edicts, nor was he the one to initiate said edicts. (Granted, he COULD have lifted them; he certainly wasn't shy about making changes in general.)

Yes, Nelson still could have served a mission. If a person succeeds in starting a career cardio-thoracic surgery,however, along with serving in the military, the person is already going to be in his/her early thirties by the time he/she finishes residency and fellowships and begins his/her career in earnest.

I'm unwilling to cut Nelson slack in most respects, but I am in this regard. He fulfilled a higher calling by serving in the military than he would have by served a mission. He would have been practically a cue ball prior to treating his first patient as an attending had he actually done both.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/2020 09:53PM by scmd1.

I know a lot of people who do stuff that I wish they wouldn't do. I disagree with Nelson about religion and about many social and political issues.

I still give him credit for trying to serve people through his medical career.

Maybe your point is that he was being hypocritical. I am not sure what that has to do with Bundy. It seems unrelated. What if they both drove Ford cars? What if they both failed to recylcle? Pointless.

What if Bundy had served a mission? Would that make him superior to Nelson? That's silly.

Still, however well intentioned, Nelson has done a lot of harm to people through his church leadership. His failed policies about the children of gay couples comes to mind. It seems that there are plenty of valid criticisms of his work. No need to denigrate the man for something that was actually commendable.

Please don't take this persaonally. Sometimes we all have a joke flop...

I did both. Neither enthusiastically. Stuff happens.

And yeah, premise is in bad taste and absurd - a twofer.

And look which one was smart enough to get out

Getting out may have been smart in Bundy's case, but Nelson has been the benefit of not exactly insignificant perks due to staying in the church.

Serial killer Ted Bunday was re-baptized by proxy after his death. I'll betcha that he's up there serving his mission now in the Spirit World. Or, I'd bet, at least, that someone has said that.

JoeSmith666 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That's right. MoroniCentral prez Russel Nelson and
> Ted Bundy - Both of them - did not serve
> missions.
>
> Nelson used military service as his excuse.
>
> Ted has a number of them he could have used. Being
> a Convert was one. Law School another. Working on
> long term goals and a Personal Improvement project
> with young women another...
>
> Excuses, excuses, excuses.

You really are a useless dick. Aren't you?